Got some old "Shikaar" tales to share? Found a great new spot to Fish? Any interesting camping experiences? Discussion of Back-packing, Bicycling, Boating, National Parks, Wildlife, Outdoor Cooking & Recipes etc.

Forum rulesPLEASE NOTE: There is currently a complete ban on Hunting/ Shikar in India. IFG DOES NOT ALLOW any posts of an illegal nature, and anyone making such posts will face immediate disciplinary measures.

"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." -- Robert Heinlein

What worries me is that most attacks on humans is by juvenile tigers of late who also seem starved. Not being able to claim a territory from more powerful grown up males could be the reason. It is alleged that frequent tiger sighting within Bhopal Municipal areas is attributed to some nexus between Forest officers and Villagers. Old/sick and worthless cattle are tied at the peripheral edges to attract and make tiger kill them to claim compensation of RS. 20K + which is then split between the two at mutually decided rate. No strong evidence against it though.

Deforestation/ habitat destruction is of course an ongoing problem in our country. Exacerbated by the fact that the blanket ban on hunting has kicked out genuine hunters from the discussion and left things at the mercy of land grabbers, forest officials and commercial poachers!

"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." -- Robert Heinlein

mundaire wrote:AFAIK this was a 10+ year old cat. Maybe others can add details.

Deforestation/ habitat destruction is of course an ongoing problem in our country. Exacerbated by the fact that the blanket ban on hunting has kicked out genuine hunters from the discussion and left things at the mercy of land grabbers, forest officials and commercial poachers!

Though am totally against killing anything 'innocent', I think there was no other option given the circumstances.Perhaps maneating cats if caught alive could be sent to zoos where they could be handled accordingly & kept in captivity. The tiger gets to live as do the people. Kids can learn how humans are affecting the animals...

A 10-yr old cat could be hunting humans after a loss of territory or injury. I wonder what makes a maneater a maneater.. I mean do humans taste better than mutton/beef to tigers??!

GNV wrote:There is only one way to stop a confirmed man eating tiger from killing humans. Killing it. At least in this case the real man eater was shot dead. Hope the guard recovers.

Not so easy as it seems. Though, I agree with your thinking. The government should clearly mark the tiger habitat and some how ensure they do not stray out of that area, even though it would be very difficult and expensive to achieve. But human life is worth more than that.In the meantime shoot any tiger that strays out. But again that would lead to indiscriminate hunting and the dead tigers being dragged out of their habitat and shown as being shot there.

Like I said earlier.....leave the deforested area alone for a few years and it will regenerate itself back to its previous glory on its own. All it needs is the non interfearance from humans.I have seen this happen within 6 months at Vindhyachal/Sattpuda tiger reserve.The villages that were relocated from the core areas have no sign of their existance left and is beeming full with wild life activity.

marksman wrote:Like I said earlier.....leave the deforested area alone for a few years and it will regenerate itself back to its previous glory on its own. All it needs is the non interfearance from humans.I have seen this happen within 6 months at Vindhyachal/Sattpuda tiger reserve.The villages that were relocated from the core areas have no sign of their existance left and is beeming full with wild life activity.

Walking single file in maneating tigers territory is not good for the health of the man at the tail end and in rogue elephants territory it is the person in front that is mostly in danger of the attack. The guard was lucky in the sense that he was not removed silently and was not shot by the hunter when tiger was on him. But then only forest department knows what the truth is.

The government should clearly mark the tiger habitat and some how ensure they do not stray out of that area, even though it would be very difficult and expensive to achieve. But human life is worth more than that.In the meantime shoot any tiger that strays out

Tigers don't know how to read stop signs jokes apart - this I guess is already being done by relocating villagers from CORE zone and I believe also from the BUFFER zone as far as possible. Of course human beings obviously cannot be sacrificed but nor can tigers for that matter! Infact it is imperative that human beings be protected in order to protect the tiger but it is also important that the wrong animal is not killed either. In this particular case it was a forest guard and not a villager and the villian (if we can call the tiger that) was obvious. Anyways, since legal hunting does not look like it will be opened, the other solution is to also ensure the villagers or anyone living close to tiger reserves and national parks benefit from tourism so the motivation and interest is there to continue saving wildlife

Smj, you hit the nail on the head by bringing up the need for locals to derive economic benefit from wildlife.

Of course it is also a fact that legal managed hunting pumps in more money into local economies than photo tourism. Not that the latter has no place, it most certainly does. Just that it doesn't generate the same volume of money.

Furthermore, it is hard to find more passionate conservationists than hunters, in fact whatever little virgin forest we have left was almost all kept aside and preserved as hunting areas by the erstwhile royalty.

"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." -- Robert Heinlein

Of course it is also a fact that legal managed hunting pumps in more money into local economies than photo tourism. Not that the latter has no place, it most certainly does. Just that it doesn't generate the same volume of money.

Totally agree Abhijeet, unfortunately the government is blind even to the latter at least in some forest areas like Mudumalai (opposite Bandipur and on the other side of the Moyar) where they had almost stopped all park Safari's for a long time leading to a stalemate situation with the locals as far as I know. Not sure what the situation is now. Pench tiger reserve has recently woken up to this and it seems the FD is working with the locals to ensure conservation of forests and fauna whilst also ensuring they benefit from it!

Furthermore, it is hard to find more passionate conservationists than hunters

I suppose logically this has to be true as what would one shoot if animals were not conserved! Other than famous hunters JC and KA the only other hunters who I am aware of who were passionate about conservation were ERC Davidar, Richard Radcliffe (both from the Nilgiris area) and of course Billy Arjan Singh. There would have definitely been quite a few others like them for sure. However I am not so sure if all hunters felt this way as there were quite a few 'hunters" (especially the novea rich and political class) upto 1973 the year which legal hunting was open till, who took to just firing at anything and everything they saw, be it a baby animal, a pregnant female or a female with cubs. Sometimes these hunters would take to driving in open jeeps at night (thus breaking the other hunter code of "sun down gun down") through jungle roads and firing randomly at any eyes that were lit by their powerful headlights and not even knowing what they shot thus leaving the animal to suffer and die in agony or maybe permanently damaged and disabled. I guess what I mean is that these kind of hunters did irreparable damage to our wildlife rather than help conservation. Also, today you have people like Valmik Thappar, Belinda Wright, Latik Rana etc who are equally passionate about conservation but who to the best of my knowledge never hunter either